A very negative positive

Well, this sucks.

We’ve been rehearsing ART by Yasmina Reza for weeks and were supposed to be performing it this weekend. A friend of mine is directing. Two other friends are playing two of the three roles. I’ve come late to the game as the prompter. I wasn’t expecting to be needed this weekend, as all three of the actors have their parts nailed.

We get a bit of grief from some people for being the only group on the island that still requires audience members to be masked. (Some groups do “recommend” masks, but there is no requirement.) That said, we also get kudos from other people. As lovely as wishful thinking might sometimes be, we are all too aware that Covid has not gone away. We have regular cast and crew members who have pre-existing conditions for whom Covid would be a lot more serious than “a bad cold”. This is also true of many of our elderly audience members. So we put safety first. 

In the spring of 2022, after a long spell of online productions, we were getting ready to put on our first live show since lockdown in 2020. We kept the windows of the rehearsal venue open for ventilation and the air filtration machine on and, in a leap of faith, were rehearsing unmasked. The faith was misplaced. The day after a Sunday rehearsal of A Divine Comedy, one of the cast rang me to say he wasn’t feeling well. He did a test and it was positive. Although he’d felt fine on Sunday, he knew he’d been exposed the previous Thursday. Within days two other cast members and the stage manager had tested positive for Covid. In two of these cases (people with those pre-existing conditions) it turned into long Covid. Two years later, one of them still hasn’t fully recovered.

So that was that. Revised policy. All rehearsals until the dress would be masked and cast and crew would make a commitment to avoid all unmasked indoor activities for the last two weeks before the performance. (A fortnight before the performances of Cinderella a couple of years ago I sent out a reminder of this to all cast and crew, stating that, if I saw them in the grocery store without a mask, we would be having words.) We also instituted a testing policy. All cast were to test on the day of the dress rehearsal and on opening night. 

I confess I was on tenterhooks that week. If the worst came to the worst, I could step in, perform most of the roles. Far from ideal, but the show would go on. If, however, Cinderella, Prince Charming or the evil stepmother came down with Covid, we would be fucked. Fortunately, everyone stayed healthy.

Yesterday was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for ART and I’m sure you know where this is going.

Yes, shortly after the producer sent out a note informing us that all four performances were pretty well sold out (yay!), one of the actors informed the director that he’d tested positive for Covid. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out that after the tech rehearsal on Sunday (when he would have already been infected) he went out for an unmasked beer with the other two actors (both of whom have those pre-existing conditions). Clearly, the show could not go on.

A mad scramble to contact ticket holders and get the word out as far and wide as we could.

And now we cross our fingers. The venue has tentatively been rebooked for the first weekend in April. This is the latest we can go, otherwise key members of the production will not be available. Sigh.

Meanwhile, auditions are being held tonight for the one-act plays to be performed at the end of May, one of which is mine. Rehearsals were supposed to start next week, after the performances of ART. That’s all up in the air now. Fuck a duck.